MOVING IN THE LANDSCAPE: VISIBLE / INVISIBLE
This exercise in visual composition offers opportunities to discuss evidence of human passage in the natural landscape. During the editing process, each person will have access to the workshop footage. This will enable Students to further collaborate on the end result, or to compose individual works. Through voiceover, text over, and added music or sound compositions, the finished works will potentially convey a variety of messages related to the AnthropoScene Conference objectives.

The group will set up a tripod and camera in a fixed position facing a lush green area. (1) An establishing view of the scene will be recorded. (2) Volunteer(s) wearing the blue or white suit(s) will stand still in the green area. Once an image of the person(s) is recorded, recording will continue and the person(s) will move out of position. Volunteers will be encouraged to try out various ways of moving slowly through the scene.

In the editing process, the footage will be layered and color keying will be used to minimize the visibility of the figure(s). The desired effect in this DIY exercise will be an imperfect removal of the figure. (i.e. the keying effect sometimes leaves edge traces and this will reveal the movement of the figure.) Overall, the finished footage should reveal the outline of a (nearly invisible) figure moving in the landscape. During the editing process, Students will make decisions on what the final work will actually convey to the viewer.

In trying to define the broader category of what I do as an artist, working with the invisible and the visible probably covers it.

We are here to talk about the MediaPackBoard (MPB) but it is not all of what we do and we will talk about our current and ongoing collaboration: FLOW: BIG WATERS, Everglades project at the end of this presentation.

Amid other life activities and use of various artists’ media, I have been working with video for a long time. During my Foundation studies at NSCAD, Pat Kelly, one of my Instructors, had us work through a video exercise of ‘filling the screen.’ When I created MPB Was There Then, I was remembering back to what I hold in memory as the ‘heyday of conceptual art – when Andy Warhol was GOD’ – and I enjoyed reaching back to the ideas surrounding the image within an image otherwise known as the Droste effect.

And so, as I talk, I will move slightly back and forward in time. Although the MPB has been set up on a mannequin today, it is not yet purely a museum object as yet. Ten years of programming has included not only the playback of new works but active involvement with random audience/participants.

The MediaPackBoard had its public debut at NSCAD during Daniel’s Free Market Karaokepresentation (2005), in the Boardroom. Daniel presented and I tagged along, trying out the MPB on the trip. We also brought along and screened the Alberta Prairie Tales 7 film and video program.

A lot has already been said about the MPB so when I looked at points to bring today, I could not decide what to add to the discourse. Then I realized that which we must always remind ourselves of: THE NOW. I never brought anything HERE to YOU before, and then I got over my block.

The value of creation is commodifiable. It starts out with an idea, moves through a process and finds a place in the world. Some might say that the value of that creative power is known to the artist, and its aggregate value is arrived at when-and-after a work is taken out to the test market. Others might argue for the time factor, the process of permitting the creation to age like a fine wine or cheese. Meanwhile from the creation point of view, back at the studio, if the ideas do not get out, artists can become discouraged with working through all of the processes involved with problem solving; i.e. the how and the why that are needed to create a work, to complete a project.

I think that not getting the work ‘out’ might be what has happened when artists give up creating and move away from the art world. Arguably, it could be the result of individuals deciding that they will apply the problem solving skills honed in the art process to another field with more immediate payback.

Because it can sometimes take a while for the world to catch up with the wonder of your creations, you might be considering the portable gallery option; of taking ideas out to find the audience that is ready for what you can bring to them. And that relates to cultural change, to expanding the parameters and expectations of works that are not of the same stuff as those commodities previously recognized as having value.

In fact, value itself is undergoing new definitions in contemporary culture. While monetary value is still the bottom line, artists are finding that there is interest in their works that fall outside of the lines imposed by traditional gallery structures.

MPB Earth was a hands on science experiment: The Angle of Incidence is Equal to the Angle of Reflection, Calgary, 2008. A spy-cam was attached to a helium balloon. Audience / Participants could direct the gaze of the camera using a mirror and by adjusting the ‘kite strings’. The image picked up by the eye of the camera was projected onto the MPB monitor.

Swedish Director Roy Anderson, in the fortuneteller scene, Songs from the Second Floor, offers a poignant and rather timeless look at the demands of world based politics and economies. There can be multiple interpretations of any movie scene and here is one: Those in charge of the economy and future survival are assembled around a boardroom table in the presence of a fortuneteller. Suddenly, they all notice that the building next door is moving, panicking, they rush out of the room; they bail out. The fortuneteller calmly steps away from her crystal ball, moving slowly toward the window and the shifting view. We could interpret that those gathered around the table were not comfortable with the idea of change, of shifting baselines. Conversely, we could think that the fortuneteller, if a gypsy, or an immigrant was used to embracing change, and the need to move. Staying anchored while moving, changing, growing, maybe that has always been the challenge of living, and of working in the arts.

In the face of events well covered in the media, it seems that going anywhere is becoming more and more difficult. I am imagining that each of you who is taking Michael’s course, has ideas for putting your work out there, for finding your audience, and having your ideas gain more visibility. Within that line of thought, we must all ask ourselves, ‘what is the place of portable and alternative galleries / public performances in today’s world culture?’. This was a question that needed to be addressed in 2005 when first stepping out with the MediaPackBoard. For sure, it is more pressing now.

I had moved into a twin tower in Calgary’s downtown core in the fall of 2000. Taking a camera out on the street changed immediately after 911. ‘I’ as the ‘eye’ behind the camera became a more self-conscious act. After that, the ease or lack of ease and comfort level at both ends of the lens vacillated, as everyone had to become alternately more comfortable and / or more vigilant of recorded scenes.

Living in full view of the Rockies, I saw the military training exercises and other preparations carried out in advance of that world event. Aside from news coverage, I witnessed the comings and goings, and the hovering of military helicopters. It was reminiscent of DirectorJohn Badham’s 1983 Blue Thunder, a movie that pre-told the future of today’s surveillance monitoring.

On Sunday June 23rd, I stepped out to gather some city scenes for the video I was working on. Downtown Calgary on Sundays, at that time, could be pretty quiet. In fact, the streets were deserted and that was no surprise. On that day however, I crossed the street and a police car sped out from around the block, screamed toward me and stopped in the middle of the crosswalk. As I spoke with the driver, answering questions of who I was and where I was going with the camera, the co-pilot searched through the onboard computer. And that was new for me as a videographer. Later, I thought about it and realized that by way of completing an exercise in readiness, anyone with a camera would probably have been stopped on that day. At the time, as a video artist out with a consumer grade camera, it was a first. And so it continues; after each destructive incident, there is some softening of acceptance followed by more stringent agendas. We have to be careful not only to react but to also move proactively in the landscape. It can be a somewhat difficult task.

The idea of creating a portable gallery or a device to get out and work with public audiences relates to transforming creative energies to satisfy the instinct to be visible, for our work to be seen, experienced, and eventually judged by an expanded peer group. While the actual street level meeting might not last longer than the face-to-face encounter, there is the chance that those people who become involved an whatever level they desire will be affected by the experience, and somehow changed. At the very least, the happening has a chance of standing out in memory more than the flow of daily routines. Or as otherwise stated by Nicolas Bourriaud in his 1998 Relational Aesthetics, “It seems more pressing to invent possible relations with our neighbors in the present than to bet on happier tomorrows.”[1]

The MPB was put together to embrace the adventure of showing up to perform unexpectedly, sometimes within another event, and to screen works. While performing and inviting audience participation, being able to screen works was an immediate payback. Sometimes people hung around or followed the MPB carrier to experience the videos. MPB CURATES 2007involved screening the work of artists: Amalie Atkins, Terry Billings, Linda Rae Dornan, Jim Goertz and Jeffrey John Jackson. The works were screened on the streets, on four separate occasions in Calgary, Edmonton and Drumheller, Alberta, with Guest Carriers interacting with public audiences.

In 2012, Daniel and I brought the MPB Street / Screen Encounterto Eyelevel Gallery’s World Portable Gallery Convention here in Halifax. At that time, Michael was the Director of Eye Level. For that adventure, we went fishing, offering others the chance to direct the gaze of a spy-cam. That was when we first met Michael and started to exchange ideas on portables.

The MPB Curates 2007 booklet was published in (2008) and in 2014, theMPB-X – a critical discourse surrounding ideas of portability in art and art dissemination was launched to celebrate 10 years of MPB. It is available free online. Essays are by: Michael McCormack, Renato Vitic, Daniel H Dugas and Valerie LeBlanc, with a foreword by Diana Sherlock.

I would like to pass along a few thoughts for consideration in setting out to create a portable and / or alternative gallery:

• Keep it simple. This seems to become easier with each technological breakthrough that becomes accessible to artists as consumers.

• Use mass media tools to give your audience more than they get through mass media.

• Treat your audience on an equal level. Exercises in frustrating an already over traumatized audience should be thrown out, maintain an attitude of offering your projects in the spirit of playful generosity.

• Keep in mind that some work is more complex and cannot be seen on the street.

• Be as clear as possible of what you hope to accomplish through your portable and alternative presentations – and be ready to address all of the questions.

Existing, Being Seen and Taking Risks
Daniel H Dugas

The need to show your work, of setting up structures, of going out there and creating something new is a very dangerous thing to do, whether it is a gallery in a car, in a coat, in a fridge, in a wall, in a pocket, even a wallet; independence means that there is no safety net. It means that you are on your own, that there are no curatorial teams, no museum funding, that there might not be anybody to back you up. But in this loneliness, you are not alone. On your side, you have energy and History. Energy obviously, but History as well, the History of Art to be more precise. Art history is one of the contexts in which your work is situated and whether you embrace this History of Art or you challenge it, it is one of the foundations for what you are doing. Context is a device of imagination.

People say that everything has been done, that there is nothing new under the sky. Nothing could be more false. Anything in our present, anything in our future has never been done. The conditions are always evolving making our NOW unique. There is freshness in everything if you are ready to explore it.

Weegee a New York based photographer and photojournalist, known for his black and white street photography said this, and I think it speaks to one approach, one attitude towards life and people that might relate to the mobile gallery entrepreneurs. He says:

“Here’s my formula – dealing as I do with human beings, and I find them wonderful: I leave them alone and let them be themselves – holding hands with love-light in their eyes – sleeping – or merely walking down the street. The trick is to be where the people are. One doesn’t need a scenario or shooting script, all one needs to do is to be on the spot, alert and human. One never knows what will happen…. I am often asked what kind of Candid Camera I use – there really is no such thing – it’s the photographer who must be candid.”

So, after completing our MFA’s in Chicago, and working in Alberta, we moved back to the Maritimes. We had been away for 7 years and somehow found ourselves with no place to show. Instead of waiting out that long period of time between the application and the opening night, we created our own art centre in the trunk of our 1981 Chevrolet Citation. It was a beautiful car, an RCMP blue hatchback. It had everything going for it. The reaction was immediately positive. People liked it.

I remember the first time we drove in town with our sign; taxi drivers seemed to think that we were another taxi company arriving in town to compete. They looked puzzled. Our slogan was ‘exhibiting near you / expositions près de chez vous.’ We took a chance and we felt empowered.

Newpapers and television stations started to talk about the project. In just a few months, we were talking to Peter Gzowski on CBC radio. We started to get emails from people as far away as BC, invitations us to show up at their place.

Sister Annie Forest, who was 90 at the time, called us to ask if she could show her paintings in the trunk! She had studied at OCAD in the 1940’s. We said yes, booking her for an early summer show. She was doing paintings of the cosmos at the time and the idea of having a galaxy in the trunk was really nice. Unfortunately we had to close the TRUNK in March. After a series of storms, it all became too difficult.

The gallery came back to life in 1999 with Gold / Rush. We travelled to Saint John’s, Newfoundland and to Hamilton, Ontario offering a series of presentations that summer.

There was a third and final TRUNK when the Alberta College of Art + Design celebrated its 75th anniversary. TRUNK75 was a festival of trunks in the College’s parkade. It took place on September 29 and 30th, 2001. There was a lot of planning for the event over the summer months that dissolved or became reshaped. In those times that followed so closely to the events of 911, something strange floated above us all.

Our next mobile project was in 2002. It was a roaming wireless webcam expedition called Location Location Location: We are getting closer.

This project was part of the E-lounge presentations at the Atlantic Cultural Space in Moncton and EMMEDIA in Calgary. We travelled across the country, starting in Calgary. We then stopped down in Winnipeg, Ottawa and Moncton to ask people about cultural characteristics and the benefits of living in their particular urban locations. The interviews were streamed to all the touchdown locations. In 2002 the technology was definitely more cumbersome than it is today. The portable was a lot more difficult to manage. The rapport that most people had with technology then was very different than it is now.

A few years later, in 2005, Valerie launched the MPB: a screen on a backpack; a mobile screen to take into crowds; an artist going for a walk; a world mediated. But this world has changed immensely since 2005. We were, and are more and more living in a world of screens. They surround us; cameras are pointing in every direction.

When Valerie asked me to write something about the MPB for MPB-X project, I was interested in doing something on the Modes of Operation.

• The first mode is about Participation

It is about going out there and asking people to participate in something. A good example of that is the MPB EARTH. For the occasion, the MPB was linked to a weather balloon filled with helium. A small camera attached near the base of the balloon transmitted a continuous live feed of its point of view to the backpack monitor. Using a mirror and strings the participants were able to direct the eye of the camera to pick up what they wanted.

• The second mode is about Exploration

These projects are often part of a process resulting in the production of photographs, videos and/or texts. MPB End of Signal, was an attempt to access over-the-air TV broadcast signals before digital conversion was imposed by the CRTC. The experiments were carried out in Sackville, New Brunswick and Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia. The old Trans-Canada Highway in Sackville provided better reception than in our home in Moncton, even with a homemade antenna.

• The third mode is about Diffusion

This is probably the most evident mode of operation for the MPB. The apparatus is an obvious platform for screening works and was used in a variety of earlier projects in Fredericton, Calgary, Edmonton, Antibes, Cannes, and Vallauris.

• The fourth mode is a hybrid category: Participation/Diffusion

These projects are a blend of showing works and meeting people. It includes many projects; FICFA, Dieppe and Edmonton (2005), La Dauphine, France (2006) and MPB Curates (2007).

I would like to conclude my talk with the last paragraph of my essay in the MPB-X 2014 publication.

“The very first slogan of the MPB, “Mediated World on the Street,” is interesting on many levels. Mediated means to act through, to depend on; in this case, both phrases relate to technology, but it also means to settle a dispute, to reconcile, and these definitions define interactions between people, between participants. The creation of the MPB was motivated by a desire to act, to play, to say something without waiting for nods of approval from galleries and curators. It was an empowerment, a way for the artist to merge public space and art, to reconcile the world of possibilities with the world of realities, and in this regard, the MPB is still relevant.”

Daniel and I often collaborate but we do individual projects as well.

Last July we were Artists in Residence in the Everglades. Invited there by the AIRIE Program and the U.S. National Park Service, we carried out research for our FLOW: BIG WATERS project. Upon returning to Canada, we began by polishing poetry and prose texts that we had started writing while on site. From that we have produced a series of videos, and continue to work on developing soundwalks for specific locations within the Everglades National Park. We will be printing photographs from some of the material we brought back and when complete, the work will be shown in installation.

We were invited to Miami in November to screen some of these videos at the Miami Book Fair International. We also participated in a panel discussion on links between art and science, as well as the transformative experience of spending time in the Everglades.

In connection with the University of Miami’s AnthropoScene: Art and Nature in a Manufactured Era, we will be going back to Miami in March to screen videos in an exhibition on campus. During our visit, we will be giving a workshop.

A soundwalk presentation refers to audio designed for listening along a prescribed route.

There are various ways of presenting and experiencing artworks based on sound and / or using sound as a component, but the basic concept is not new. As innovative consumer technologies multiply, interdisciplinary artists adapt quickly, utilizing contemporary tools for delivery of ideas, visuals and audio. In the history of the soundwalk genre, it is important to make note of the museum / gallery system of renting out recorders and headphones for use on self-guided tours through exhibitions.

In a contemporary twist, this is a form that can be, and is adapted for use by artists in a variety of ways. Any number of videos or films can be screened as part of one installation when headphones are provided for listening to the accompanying soundtracks. When sculptures or two-dimensional works (photographs, paintings, or prints) are exhibited, each work might be equipped with accompanying headphones hanging close by. The idea would be to move around the artwork, viewing while listening to a soundtrack that forms another component of the work.

The gallery setting presents a more simple option for presenting audio as it is relatively simple to install the necessary hardware for listening. If the work is a sound piece written to be experienced outside in the world, in a particular setting, other solutions for delivery need to be imagined and tried. If the work requires the audience to move along a directed path, it might be called a soundwalk or locative sound project. One delivery solution is to request your audience to download the soundtrack to their cellphones before heading out on the trail. By leaving easily recognizable markers along your trail, you can alert participants of specific sites that relate to the sound that you have constructed for listening in a specific location.

Downloading soundwalk programs in-the-field is possible in areas that have Wi-Fi access. GPS map tags can also be used to locate specific sites where portions of the audio has been designed for and designated for listening. In places where wireless / cell phone signal access is unreliable, other solutions must be found. In 2010, Aram Bartholl embedded USB drives into outdoor environments [1], and in 2011, Chris Allick embedded MP3 Players into sites. [2] While these platforms might work well in urban settings, the placement of similar infrastructure in remote areas is not always appropriate and non-obtrusive solutions are required.

Sometimes it is important to remember more direct means of communicating, of presenting ideas. Live delivery requires practice and use of performative skills but this method has the advantage of freeing the delivery from technology. Onsite actors that move along the walk with the audience might be engaged to present the sound content. While this might appear to resemble the tradition of theatre, the variation is that the delivery is intended as an animation of the walk rather than the performance of a play.

Fundamentally: A constructed soundtrack, or even a speaking voice, can carry more complex, more complete messages than visual cues alone. A good example is the case where a poem, intended for video and entered as text over image, must be spare. Texts must be cropped to hold the interest of the viewer as well as to permit a reasonable time for viewers to read the words that work in concert with image flow, and ambient sound if present. Timing is everything and spoken word is sometimes exactly what is needed.

Report from a visit to Miami and the Everglades National Park – Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas, November 2014

Our visit to South Florida to screen video poetry at the Miami Book Fair International and a visit to the Everglades National Park was short. Aside from the two days of air travel, we were there for just three days, really full days! To begin, on November 18, we screened several videos and took part in a panel discussion on the transformative effects that the July 2014 AIRIE (Artist In Residence In Everglades) residency had on our work. While our FLOW: BIG WATERS everglades-based project is ongoing and will eventually include an installation with soundwalks and photographs, we were happy to screen a selection of the video works that we have completed to this date.

The panel discussion was co-moderated by Artist and AIRIE Executive President, Deborah Mitchell and Biologist Skip Snow. The five AIRIE Artists who presented and took part in the discussion were: Gustavo Matamoros, Reed van Brunschot, Author Anne McCrary Sullivan, and ourselves. After brief introductions by Deborah Mitchell, Miami historian Dr. Paul George opened the conversation with details about the current and recent landmarks that stand and stood close to the Book Fair venue we were sitting within. Downtown Miami is undergoing many physical changes as new buildings replace older structures. Dr. George’s comments brought some of these changes to light. The evening took place at the SWAMP; the pop-up lounge utilized for showcasing social and cultural events during the Miami Book Fair International on the Miami Dade College, Wolfson Campus.

After the AIRIE presentation, Gustavo Matamoros and his partner, Miami-based Graphic Artist Claudia Ariano invited us to drive over to Little Havana’s El Cristo Restaurant to experience Cuban cuisine. The conversations continued in a range of topics that ran from contemporary art through a variety of cultural markers.

During two of our days, we walked around the Wolfson Campus and Miami’s downtown to become somewhat oriented with the city. We found our way over to the Miami Beach Mall for the opening of an umbrella of exhibitions at the ArtCenter of South Florida. The open studios and exhibitions for the 30 Years on the Road show spread out from 924 Lincoln Road, along the block to transform the experience from indoor venues to vitrines for sidewalk viewing. It is an ambitious undertaking that showcases retrospective and contemporary artworks embodying many genres. Outside of 924 Lincoln, the Listening Gallery, in partnership with Subtropics.org is presenting the collaborative work: Walk-Run. On opposite sides of the entrance doors, Walk-Run features face to face moving images by Charles Recher. Combined with a soundscape by Rene Barge and Gustavo Matamoros, Walk-Run can be experienced differently depending on if you are up-close to it, on the sidewalk in front of the building, or at distance. Turning the corner to view other artworks presented in vitrines also permits variable exposure to the audio as the sound waves bend around the architecture of the cityscape. Owing to the nature of showing so many artists at one time, the opening reception moved along the block with conversations continuing inside in and outside of the studios. Walking this stretch of the Mall with Gustavo, we met and talked with many artists. We also took time to view examples of art deco along the Lincoln Road Mall.

On November 20, the final day of our visit, Deborah Mitchell invited us to drive out to the AIRIE lab to visit November’s resident artist Regina Jestrow. Regina had generously organized an open studio reception in the lab where she laid out a sampling of the research she carried out during the month. It was a chance to talk informally with Regina, the other artists and scientists who dropped by, and several of the Park Staff that we had the pleasure of working with during July. We saw the beginning stages of Regina’s artworks utilizing imprinted rubbings and look forward to seeing the next stage of this new textile based work.

Back in Miami the same evening, we visited the Locust Project. Showing in the Main Space is Daniel Arsham’s Welcome to the Future. In the project room,Salvadorian artist Simón Vega’s exhibition Sub-Tropical Social Sculptures is ongoing.We arrived in time for the Art on the Move presentation with Curator Dominic Molon in conversation with Vancouver-based artist Ron Terada. The subject of the discussion was Terada’s Soundtrack for an Exhibition.

Our on-the-ground introduction to the Miami art scene gave us the chance to scratch the surface of this diverse, multicultural city where Spanish is the predominantly spoken second language. Staying in downtown Miami gave us the chance to see the last days of the old Miami Herald Building as it underwent demolition. It will be interesting to go back and see what new masterpiece rises to replace it on Biscayne Bay. If one word could be used to describe the face and evolving culture of Miami, vibrant would fit!

About Valerie LeBlanc

Originally from Halifax, Nova Scotia, pluri-­disciplinary artist and writer Valerie LeBlanc has worked in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Australia. Her creations travel between poetry, performance, visual and written theory. Valerie LeBlanc has been creating video poetry since the mid 1980’s, and is the creator of the MediaPackBoard (MPB), portable screening / performance device. In the fall of 2012, she published her play The Raft, through Basic Bruegel Editions.